There is only one way to choose nothing. If there is no thing to choose, you have a choice: choose nothing. If there are two things from which to choose, choosing nothing is still a choice. Austin, TX I used to tell my students a story about counting goats as the birth of mathematics. They knew … Continue reading Pascal’s Triangle
Austin TX Some people have favorite numbers. According to a global online poll, 7 is the world’s favorite. I admit I fancy 7, maybe because I have 6 siblings or because seven ate nine. Either way, there is a number I fancy more than 7. The number e has made an appearance in previous posts[1], most recently … Continue reading e
Austin TX For many years, I was a skeptic about Pi Day. Calendars seem arbitrary, susceptible to the whim of emperors. Pi seems constant. It is the ratio of the circumference to the diameter for any circle (in the Euclidean plane). A friend sent me a link to a NYTimes article this morning about Pi Day. The … Continue reading Pi Day
Dallas TX I grew up in the 1980s. Yes, yes. Duran Duran, leg warmers, MTV, Miami Vice, etc. (It was a special time.) Ronald Reagan was the U.S. President. We slowly but surely peeled our frosty selves out of the Cold War. Wealth was a central theme. Even as a youngster, I watched with interest as … Continue reading Compound Interest
New Orleans LA In graduate school, I spent a fair amount of time getting familiar[z] with the Riemann zeta function. Courses in complex analysis and special functions along with reading a couple of pop math books[e] increased my familiarity with zeta as well as the Riemann hypothesis. In answer to the gentleman’s question in New Orleans, “It … Continue reading Riemann Zeta Function
Austin TX I was thinking about prime numbers this past summer. In Prime Parking, I mentioned the prime number theorem. It deserves a little more than the brief nod I gave it. Many great mathematicians worked on creating and proving a conjecture about how many primes can be found smaller than any given number. For … Continue reading Prime Number Theorem
Southeast Regional Library Gilbert AZ The primes have gotten some good press this year. In January, a mathematician found a prime number with over 17 million digits.[2] He was participating in GIMPS, the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search. Sort of like SETI, but these folks unleash the power of their personal computer on a search … Continue reading Prime Parking
Austin TX 2013/06/16 This post and the previous are sort of farewell gifts to my students who just finished their first year studying calculus. I love creating lectures (as you might imagine), but they hungered for something else. They challenged, inspired, and reminded me what I love about teaching. For me, the gift of teaching is … Continue reading Euler’s Formula
This post was in the works for over a month. The chalk happened in one evening, but the research and writing took time. Taylor series make for a meaty topic, and Brook Taylor had a full life. Plus, infinity took me on a few tangential journeys. The big idea here is approximation, in particular the evolution … Continue reading Taylor Series
Barton Springs PoolAustin TX2013/06/02 There are so many books, articles, websites, poems and cartoons about π; I considered not chalking it. I have been working on an upcoming post on Taylor series, but π just keeps saying, “Hey, after all I have done for you, will you please just spend some time with me?” So, here … Continue reading π
Footpath Math: Chalk it up to a math geek 